Chapter Thirteen #3
“Yes, the Chancellor made me. I am his triumph – and his instrument. In bringing me home, he won the king’s trust and an appointment as the royal physician; he has parleyed that into mastery of the kingdom.
He intends to rule through me when our father is gone.
All this I know. I know, too, that he has brought ruin upon the kingdom in his folly.
He thinks himself cleverer than everyone else, even as all his schemes fall apart.
” She coughed, a terrible racking cough all through her thin frame.
“But still, I would like to live. Even if it is only a shadow of a life, it is mine, and I would like to keep it.”
“I don’t care about the surface,” said Bait, “or being Aldebara. You can have all that. But Orphir’s broken the Rules. That’s not right.”
“I rather do care about the kingdom, and I have grown used to being Aldebara. If I could take those as freely as you offer them, I would, but the keeping of those things is not within my power. It is in Orphir’s.”
As if summoned by a spell, Orphir arrived at that moment, bursting in the door without knocking. I skulked in the corridor with Nala, bobbing my fresh head, trying to catch a glimpse of Bait without letting her see me.
“You should not be out of bed, your highness,” said Orphir. “Nala should not have let our guest disturb you.”
“But we were having such an interesting conversation,” you replied, “I feel quite revived.” I remember overhearing that, and laughing.
“Overstressed, overstimulated, overexposed. Back to bed,” ordered Orphir. “And as for you—”
How would you describe the sound he made then? I remember when he stabbed me, it was in the back, and I was so surprised that I only made a modest noise. Sort of “ah”, as if it was a thing I’d long expected.
Orphir should have expected this moment, too.
Bait had a long history of biting and stabbing.
If the princess’s breakfast knife had been steel, Bait might have inflicted some damage.
Instead, the bone blade splintered against one of Orphir’s chains of office, and she succeeded only in gouging flesh.
Not a deep wound, but a painful one, hence the sound.
The guards grabbed Bait and dragged her from your room. Nala ran after them, remonstrating, urging them to be gentle.
Orphir – I saw him tend to his wound, and say a few words to you.
I’m told he was your tutor for a few years, before he wormed his way into higher and higher offices in court.
I suspect he was a better teacher than I – he was always clever, and more diligent in his studies.
I am absolutely certain that you were a more attentive student than Bait.
You are not the sort to get distracted by the curious shape of a stone, nor could you go off wandering with mischievous goblins when the mood took you.
I am certain you were the better student.
But Orphir learned nothing from you, and I learned from Bait.
This is her story, not mine! Forgive me for wandering. Orphir put you back to bed, gave you sleeping potions and tinctures and extracts and wove spells of slumber, told Nala to tend to you, then shut the door. Let me tell you what happened on the far side.
The guards held Bait as she thrashed and kicked. I lurked. I tried not to be there. Had I the power to work a spell of invisibility, I would have.
Orphir drew his knife. Seeing that, the guards forced Bait to her knees. One pulled back her head, exposing her throat.
“No!” I shouted.
An embarrassingly long time later, I remembered I had limbs again and could have done more than shout. But my interruption was enough. Orphir turned to me.
“Enough coddling the idiot child. Explain to her what her options are at this point.”
I made a noise in my throat.
I wasn’t used to having a throat.
“Bait . . .”
She looked at me, and I lost all my courage in those fierce eyes.
“Oh,” she said, “it’s you.”
“Speed,” said Orphir, “and brevity, please.”
“I know this must be confusing, but Orphir made me a new body. His magic’s more potent here, close to the Dungeon – just as we surmised magic accretes—”
“Brevity,” hissed Orphir.
“But he needs to remake the spells that created the changeling princess, and for that he needs your help. A few drops of blood, that’s all it’ll take. That’s all you’ll have to give. You should do it, Bait. If you struggle, he . . . well, you know what he did to me—”
Orphir, still pressing a handkerchief into his wound, coughed in a threatening manner.
“Well, I did provoke him, of course. And that’s an illustrative lesson. You shouldn’t provoke the powerful, Bait. Give him what he needs, and afterwards, you can go back to the Dungeon – if that’s what you want, of course.”
She said nothing for a long time.
“Bait? Hello?”
“You said you were my friend.”
For all my defences, that wounded me deeper than Orphir’s knife.
“Bait, child, of course I am.” The words were like bricks in my mouth, and I spat them out as fast as I could, building a wall of them.
“Loyal to the end, and after, for that matter. Did I not welcome you to my tomb when you could barely stand? Did I not stand with you against the dragon? Did I not give you the fullness of my brain pan, if not my brain, in all those lessons? Of course I’m your friend. ”
“But you’re helping him.” One blow, and she smashed my wall.
“It’s, ah, complicated. But he’s given me his word – and other, more binding commitments, I insisted on those, I’m no fool – that you’ll not be harmed.
He’s not feeding you to any dragons this time.
No, once this is done, and it’ll be the smallest pinprick, no permanent harm, and I must say she seems to be the most delightful person for a changeling, the ersatz Aldebara that is, you’d be saving her, too, so all in all, speaking as your friend, mentor, tutor, erstwhile landlord, sponsor in the Levelling, legal counsel, confessor and whatever honours you might choose to heap on me, and seeing as you are technically a princess I suppose that would include a knighthood or two but that’s by the by—”
I gasped for air, having forgotten I now had lungs.
“—on the whole, I would advise you to do as he says. Please. For your sake and mine.”
“Why did he take the others?”
“What others?”
“Only-Sister, and the goblins, and Gloop and all the Denizens.”
“A temporary relocation! The Surveyors need to be able to, ah, survey in relative safety. I taught you long ago that there’s magic in the Dungeon, and Orphir’s servants need to gather a portion of it to resolve, ah, certain troubles on the surface that need not concern us.
And to heal Princess Aldebara, of course.
” I knelt down next to her. “It’s not like the dragon, Bait.
This isn’t a threat to your place in the Dungeon.
You just need to be good. Remember the Rules.
Trouble ye not the Master, he who was first here and last.”
I attempted an encouraging smile.
“No.”
“Orphir’s the Master—”
“No. He’s not a Denizen. He doesn’t deserve to be. And he shouldn’t have taken us from the Dungeon, any of us. He—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” snapped Orphir.
His patience was exhausted. He spoke in the Dungeon Tongue, so there would be no chance of Bait misunderstanding.
“I took them because there is power in that Dungeon, a wellspring of wild magic that spawned those aberrations.
With that power, I shall work wonders. I took them because I am the Master of the Dungeon and they belong to me, to use as I see fit.
“Now, I gave Cornelius my word that you shall not be harmed, and I shall keep that promise. Your choice, then, is this: you can cooperate with my efforts to stabilise the changeling, and, when I am done, I might return some of the less troublesome beasts to my Dungeon. I shall even let you choose which I spare and which ones are butchered. But if you cross me, if you try to escape or resist, I shall butcher them all. Do you understand?”
“No,” she said again.
“She understands, Orphir! She understands. It’s just her way to be defiant. She’ll behave!” I assured him, and silently I pleaded that Bait would listen.
That was that. Bait was removed to another chamber in the castle, a forgotten oubliette, and there in the dark she would stay until Orphir was done with her.
Over the next few days, he took blood from Bait, and locks of her hair, and filled little glass bottles with her breath.
He ground up bits of Dungeon and cast spells with the dust. One must applaud his work ethic, if nothing else – he’d toil long into the night, surrounded by jars of fuming mercury and elaborate horoscopes, trying to find the spell that would restore you to health.
Nothing worked.
He confided in me. He was not complimentary to you.
He complained about how wilful you were, how closely he had to watch you in case you turned on him again.
How he’d been able to bend King Arus to his will, but you were troublesome even though he’d conjured you to be his tool.
A broken tool, he called you, a leaking vessel.
He’d poured so much of his precious magic into you, and it all just ran out again like sand from a cracked hourglass.
He blamed Bait, too – he believed that if Bait was more obedient, more willing, more human, then her changeling copy would be equally tractable and responsive to his spell.
Each day of her ongoing defiance cost him dearly.